Gunesh Chund's mind, it vanished quickly before the personal peace
which his decision brought to the household.
Perhaps Veru might have wondered at the lull which thereinafter fell
over the combat, but that she herself was absorbed in a new hope of
victory, and thought it possible that her keen-eyed mother-in-law
might, in like manner, be preparing for defeat.
So the time of truce passed on; until one day, almost before Gunesh
had realized his own capitulation, his mother informed him that a
bride had been found.
"So soon!" he exclaimed, dismally. "O mother, take care! Sure the
choice of a plough-bullock would take me longer."
"Then 'tis time to tell Veru," was his only remark, when the beauties,
virtues, and charms of the young lady were dinned into his ears.
Whereupon his mother, with much inward contempt at his scruples, told
him curtly that she had purposely chosen a bride from a far country,
so that he need say nothing, since nothing would be known by others,
until the festivities began.
"I will tell her before then," he said, relieved; but somehow the days
passed by, leaving behind them the silence that they found.
Meanwhile Veru wearied Heaven with prayers and penances till she grew
thin and pale--given to fits of hysteria and tears, yet with a
triumphant look in her eyes as she listened to her mother-in-law's
constant allusions to her ill-health, with which the old lady
bolstered up Gunesh Chund's failing resolution. All three were too
much occupied with their own thoughts and secrets to notice anything
unusual in the bearing of the others; or if they did notice it,
naturally put the change down to vague suspicions, and so held their
own counsel more firmly.
The crops were fast turning russet and gold under the glare of
sunlight succeeding to the monsoon rains, when Gunesh Chund said
good-bye to his household for ten days, and rode by winding village
ways to the broad white road that carried Western civilization, in the
shape of a post-bag, through the district. Veru, clothed in madder and
indigo, stood on the roof to watch him out of sight; loath to lose
him, and regretting that she had not risked her secret ere he left.
How much more would she have regretted it had she known that her
husband's destination lay far beyond his usual bourne, the Central
Revenue Office, and that his bundle contained all things necessary
for the interchange of presents with a new bride! Meanwhile her
mother-in-law, stolidly at work below, wondered how any woman could be
so immodest as to show grief at a husband's departure. And Gunesh
Chund, riding between serried ranks of feather-topped maize and
swelling bosses of millet, thought of the coming harvest. In a way,
each and all were looking forward with eager desire to reaping what
they had sown; as if life held any other fate for humanity!
That same afternoon, Veru, unwilling to relax any of her efforts
because of her hopes, set off to worship a snake which frequented an
old ant-hill at the farther end of the village common. The day had
been one of extreme heat, and a yellow dust-haze hung over everything.
Dust above, below, around her; only the ant-hill, furrowed by
long-past rains into rugged pinnacles, rising clear and distinct. She
was a timid woman, unused to roaming so far, and she looked fearfully
around, dreading lest from one of the dark holes piercing the mound a
hooded head might rear itself and speak to her. Such things had been,
she knew; for beneath the veneer of unbelief the old superstitions
held her in thrall.
Hastily, yet carefully, lest evil should befall from any lack of
ceremony, she ranged her sugar-cakes, hung up her chaplet of flowers,
and sprinkled the milk she had brought in a little brass pot with a
lavish hand; it left dark, ominous-looking stains on the white dust.
Glad to escape from such weird surroundings, yet feeling the need of
rest, she drew aside among the wild caper-bushes, and sat down, wiping
the beads of perspiration from her forehead with the corner of her
veil. It felt quite hot against the damp skin, cooled by the fierce,
dry wind that even in this sheltered spot drove the dust along in
swirls. She drew her veil over her head and sat still as a statue, in
the curiously drooping attitude which to Western eyes suggests
absorbing grief; but Veru's mind was full of a great joy, which gained
no little sweetness from the thought of revenge. Yet as she dreamed
far away into the years, a spreading fold of her veil, caught in a
caper-thorn, seemed pointing to something that glistened among the
roots behind her. Veru, rising to go, stooped to disengage herself,
and saw--a baby's bracelet! The next instant, with a shrill,
high-pitched shriek of rage, she set off running towards the village.
Her mind, slow enough to take in novel ideas, needed no prompting
here. It was little Nihali's bracelet, and the explanation of this
fact followed as a matter of course. The dead child had been exposed
as an augury; _but what had the verdict been?_ Strange as it may seem,
that thought came uppermost. Doubtless, had the truth been told her in
the first freshness of bereavement, when the soft touch of the little
hands and the clinging of the lips were more than a memory,
indignation and horror at the outrage on her child might have overcome
her curiosity. At any rate, the desire to pose as an advanced woman
would have induced her to conceal it. But months had passed, bringing
a new hope, to ensure which her inherited instincts would gladly have
sacrificed more than a _dead_ girl. Indeed, the wish for some such
augury had more than once invaded her, and lo! the sign had been
given, and she knew nothing of it. That it had been favourable she
assumed, believing that otherwise her mother-in-law would have
hastened to make it known. Unheard-of spite and cruelty!--but if it
were the climax, it should also be an end to tyranny. Trembling with
excitement and the uneducated woman's desire for words, she ran
forward panting and breathless, with little cries of anger and grief,
until she sank down exhausted with the unwonted exertion and her own
emotions. When she arose again, it was with greater calmness but more
resentment.
Her mother-in-law was toasting the new-made dough-cakes by the fire,
when, after many pauses, Veru reached home. Wearied out, she leaned
against the door-jamb for support ere commencing the fray, and looked
at the elder woman with sombre, menacing eyes. The latter paid no
attention, but went on tossing aside the heat-blistered cakes, and
placing others upright in the embers till they blew out like bladders.
Suddenly Veru raised her hand; something gleaming flew through the
air, and the dead baby's bracelet fell at her enemy's feet and rolled
among the ashes.
"The jackals have sent thee a present, grandmother."
The old woman looked at it, startled; then sprang up and faced her
adversary in fiercest indignation.
"What hast thou done, fool? Bringing the curse of girls back to the
earth! The wild beasts were more merciful than thou art, for they gave
no sign; and see, where the bread is baking thou hast thrown the
augury. O Guneshwa! O my son! would that thou wert here to see this
witch casting her spells to bring barrenness to the bride thou art
wooing! But no matter; the old mother will avert them; so bring home
thy bride, Guneshwa! bring home the virtuous Kirpa Devi, daughter of
Kirpo Ram of Badrewallah!"
Veru, struck dumb by the possible consequences of her own act, as
revealed to her in her mother-in-law's unforeseen reproach, felt the
whole world turn round as the old woman, roused out of caution, let
loose her secret and her tongue without reserve.
"It is not true! it is not true! Guneshwa would never deceive me so!"
was all the poor creature found to say against the torrent of words
and facts.
"Not true!" echoed the other, remorselessly. "Come hither, and see if
it be not true that a wedding is nigh."
Seizing Veru by the wrist, she dragged her across the court-yard,
flung open the store-room door, which was kept jealously locked
against all intrusion, and pointed to a row of handkerchief-covered
basket-trays, ranged in order on the ground.
"Behold!" she cried, jeeringly, as she lifted the covering from one,
displaying a pile of cheap tinsel-decked garments, such as are made to
fill up the measure of more solid wedding presents. "Guneshwa's mother
is not so careless as his wife. Here is everything needful, and yonder
is the pile of dates whence he took the offering that went with him
to-day. Stay--thou canst read! Put thy scholarship to some use for
once, and see if it be not true."
But Veru did not take the letters thrust at her; the shock was too
great, following on her excitement and utter weariness. She swayed as
she stood, and with a cry of "O Guneshwa, bring the dates back! bring
them back!" she fell in a heap among the baskets.
In the dawn of the next day, her mother-in-law, as she lay down to
snatch a little sleep while one of her cronies watched by Veru's bed,
told herself that the house was cursed indeed! Who would have dreamed
of the gods bringing such hopes to Veru? Who would have thought of her
concealing them even for a day? And what a heritage of evil she would
leave behind her if she died now! Nihali's augury was bad enough, but
what chance would there be for the new wife if the ghost of an
expectant mother haunted the house?
Veru must not die--should not die; so the old woman nursed her
tenderly, and strove in her rough way to bring comfort to the mind
stricken by mad jealousy and resentment.
"I _will_ die," was the only response; "I will die and become a
ghost![4] I will! I will!"
---------------------
[Footnote 4: A woman dying with her unborn child has infinite power
for ill.]
---------------------
"Hearken, O Veru," replied her mother-in-law at last, "thy dying will
not harm any one, for if thou diest ere Guneshwa returns, I swear he
shall never know a word, neither of thy hopes nor of thy fears! It
shall be silence, silence forever, and who fears a ghost he knows not
of? Answer me that!"
And Veru, gripped in the stern old woman's greater strength, could
only turn her face to the wall sullenly.
"Hast thou no message for Guneshwa?" asked the watcher at the last, as
Veru lay sinking.
"None--that--thou--wouldst--give," came the reply, with a strange
smile that remained on the lips even after death.
"Now, thank God, neither Guneshwa nor his bride need know aught of
this!" thought the old lady, as they streaked the corpse with many a
weird ceremony and precaution.
V.
The moon shone brightly as Gunesh Chund rode through the village
common on his homeward way. There was scarcely a track to be seen on
the hard, white ground, where the sparse bushes close at hand lay like
shadows here and there, but in the distance blended themselves into a
grey line against the lighter sky. No visible track, yet the
_lumberdar's_ pony picked its way unerringly, true as the needle,
towards the manger awaiting it; instinct or habit supplying the place
of reason. Its rider could boast of no such contented certainty.
Something--what, he would have been puzzled to say--had made the path
of custom seem doubtful, without supplying him with a new or clearer
road. And, overlying the dull sense of discomfort, was a distinct
remorse for the deceit to which his honest if sluggish soul was quite
a stranger. The memory of his promise troubled him, although he quite
acknowledged that a _pudmuni_, or ideal Hindu wife, would never have
claimed its fulfilment.
Suddenly his pony started and swerved, throwing him forward in his
shovel stirrups.
In his efforts to keep in his seat the cause seemed to be the sudden
appearance of a veiled woman, beckoning with outstretched hands; but
when he could give a calmer look, the difference in position caused by
his pony's advance showed him that it was but the dead trunk of a
tree. With a sign of relief he gave the animal a dig in the sides.
"'Tis thinking so much of women-folk does it," he said to himself. "I
weary for the ploughing and peace."
A sense of well-being came over him at the familiar sights and sounds,
as he neared the village. Even the dogs barking in chorus at the
pony's echoing steps seemed to him a welcome, and the house, quiet
and dark though it was, a haven of rest after the hustle and bustle of
his rapid excursion into an unknown world. The door of the inner court
was closed, for he was not expected till dawn, and he stood for an
instant beside it, listening. All was still as death, and with another
sigh of relief he stumbled up the steep stairs to his favourite
sleeping-place.
How calm it was there under the stars; how clear the path, now that he
was at home once more among familiar landmarks! Why, if difficulties
arose, had they not arisen over and over again in the lives of those
who had gone before him? What more easy than to adopt the ancient
remedy, and, by building a new court for the new wife, separate the
jealous women! His mother would, of course, side with her own choice;
so Veru, far from having any ground of complaint, would find greater
peace than heretofore. In his quiet, limited way, he loved her more
than he would have cared to avow, and so, thinking of her ease, he
fell asleep full of content.
The night passed, the dawn lightened into sunshine; yet still he
slept, wearied out by his ten days' exile from the village. And so it
came to pass that his mother, apprised of his return by finding the
pony in its accustomed place, had to rouse him by sad words.
"Awake, O Gunesh Chund, son of Anant Ram, and make thy heart strong,
for Veru thy wife is dead."
A sad amaze, an almost pitiful resignation, followed the first
incredulity; and then, as he sat below, patiently waiting for many a
rite and conventional lamentation, the memory of his last waking
thought returned to him.
"I thought of building her a new house for peace' sake," he said,
wistfully, to his mother; "and lo! the Great Ones have given her a
grave and peace forever."
"Perhaps 'tis as well, Guneshwa!" replied the old woman, softened by
his gentle grief. "Her health was poor, and if Death drew nigh, it was
better he should come before the bride."
Perhaps 'twas as well! That was all her tongue found to say, but her
heart rejoiced exceedingly that eternal silence had fallen over the
dead wife's reproaches. If Premi and Chuni only held their tongues, as
they always did if it was made worth their while, neither Gunesh Chund
nor his bride need know the curse that had come upon them. Above all,
the soft-hearted bridegroom would be saved the daily terror of seeing
the fatal ghost.
Even as it were, the autumn chills were upon him, making him shiver
and shake, and bringing the haggard, ague-stricken look so common at
that time of year to his sad face. He took little interest in the
preparations which his mother pressed on with feverish haste, but
passed days and nights out of doors among his fields, going the round
of the crops with the village accountant, and seeing to the payment of
revenue dues.
"Thou takest no rest, Gunesh Chund," exclaimed his mother,
indignantly, when he pleaded business as an excuse for not going to
the silversmith's to hurry him up with the remodelling of poor Veru's
ornaments. "A _lumberdar_ was a _lumberdar_ long before the _sahibs_
came to the land. What is it to thee if they want this written one
way, and that another? There were no such piles of papers in thy
father's day, and he was a better _lumberdar_ than thou wilt ever be."
"Mayhap, mother; but somehow 'tis ill work nowadays doing things as
they used to be done. It suits no one, not even thee."
"Not suit me--I'd like to know--"
"Nay! are not the old trinkets being altered even now. For my part, I
liked them best as they were."
"Guneshwa thou art a ninny! But thou wilt sing another song when the
bride comes to thee adorned. That new silversmith hath done well.
There is a fashion of necklet--French pattern he called it--like
needlework for fineness. And I have not forgotten the old ways, for
the talisman Veru wore is made into a _saukinmhora_, to keep her ghost
away."
The _lumberdar's_ face assumed a startled, alarmed look.
"The ghost, mother! Wherefore the ghost? Veru was a good wife, loving
me, and I was a good husband to her. There was no ill-will betwixt us,
surely."
His mother could have bitten her tongue out for her inadvertence.
"'Twas but a thoughtless word, O my son, and I am over-anxious. Surely
the woman took too many blessings from thee in life to give thee
curses in death. And see," she added, hastily, in the hope of
diverting his eager anxiety, "I have found what thou wert asking
for--the certificates of thy fathers to many and many a generation.
Thou hadst given them into Veru's keeping, but they are too precious
for a woman's holding. Who knows but she has lost some? Squandering
thy son's heritage out of spite! Who canst give back the praises of
the dead?"
So she went on in purposeful grumbling, while Gunesha, opening the
handkerchief in which the precious documents were folded, counted the
frayed papers laboriously.
"Nay! they are here, and more; let me count again. Surely, there are
thirty-and-two, and when the canal _sahib_ gave me his last year there
were but thirty-and-one. Thirty-and-one, no more."
He sat down on the door-step, shifting the papers through his awkward
hands, with the uncertain eyes of one who, being unable to read, has
to seek recognition through more devious ways. His mother, meanwhile,
utterly indifferent, had turned to some household occupation.
"See, there is a new one; that one, may be; 'tis cleaner than the
rest," he muttered to himself, opening up the folded sheet conspicuous
by its whiteness.
It was written in the Nagari character, and his puzzled face cleared
at the sight.
"'Tis all right, mother!" he exclaimed; "there are but thirty one. The
other is a letter."
He was about to add a suggestion that Veru might have written it, but
checked himself, from fear of starting another tirade against the dead
woman.
"A letter!" echoed his mother, contemptuously. "Throw it in the fire!
I have no patience with folk who find their tongues too short to touch
friend or foe."
"But, mother," returned Gunesh, with a smile, "even thy tongue is not
long enough to reach over the world."
"And wherefore should I try? I tell thee, Guneshwa, that we
peasant-folk have naught to do with the world. What he can touch with
his hands is a man's portion till he dies, and 'tis theft to go
beyond. Writing is no good except for certificates. There is Devi
Ditta's house thrown into grief, just as the boy's betrothal began, by
the news of his father being killed in Burma. God knows where Burma
is. Far enough, may be, to keep the news back till a more convenient
time, if it came as God meant it to come. And the man is dead,
anyhow."
But Gunesh Chund refolded the paper and placed it in his waistband.
His friend the accountant could tell him its purport.
"The chills again?" asked his mother, with no anxiety in her voice,
when, coming back from Devi Ditta's house with a throat rendered
hoarse by neighbourly lamentations, she found her son huddled up under
his quilt. "You must get the sahib's white powder. For a wonder, it
does good."
"Quinine will not cure me, mother," he replied in a curiously muffled
voice that startled the hearer by its dull despair.
"What ails thee, then, Guneshwa?"
The man sat up amid his heavy wrappings and looked at her without
resentment. The ague cramped his blue fingers, and made him draw
shuddering breaths through widely distended nostrils, as he sat gazing
at her with wild eyes full of a mute appeal and reproach. Then, with a
little, almost childish cry, he fell back among the quilts once more.
"Thou knowest, mother; thou knowest it well."
Her heart throbbed, but her voice was steady as she replied:
"What do I know, O Gunesh Chund?"
"That Veru kept her promise and I broke mine! She knew you would not
tell me, so she wrote. That was the letter."
The old woman stood for an instant bewildered. Then, as she realized
that all her wisdom had not availed against the dead wife's knowledge,
she threw her lean arms up over her head and beat her hands together
wildly, while the court re-echoed with her high, resonant voice.
"She wrote it? Now may God curse her utterly! My curse upon her and
every woman who learns--"
A shivering hand reached out towards her.
"Hush, mother! I have had enough of curses to-day."
The mild reproof made her forget her anger in thoughts for him.
"Light of mine eyes! heart of my heart!" she cried, flinging herself
on her knees by the bed and stretching the arms, but now raised in
cursing, around him in fierce protecting. "She cannot hurt thee--she
dare not, if charms avail. The iron rings are about her hands and
feet, the nails are through her cursed, writing fingers--would God
they had been there ere she wrote that letter!--and the mustard-seed
lies thick between her grave and the hearth. I have sown it, and will
sow it with each new moon. Look up, Guneshwa! She cannot, she dare not
return."
"She hath returned already."
The old woman rose with a gesture of despair.
"Say not so! Break not thy mother's heart with idle words. 'Tis but
the chills, and thou hast them often. The powder will cure them."
"Perhaps 'tis so," he replied, listlessly. "But I have seen her. Ere
ever I knew of her death she met me on the common as I rode home. Nay,
weep not so soon; the truth will be told ere long, and there will be
time enough for tears then."
"There will be no need to weep at all, my son," she said, crushing
down her own dread in order to lessen his, and fiercely determining to
shed no more tears till life held nothing else.
She kept her word; though, as the days passed on, even her wilful
blindness could not fail to see how the strong man grew weaker and
weaker. Her heart stood still with fear, as she watched for the sleep
of exhaustion which followed each successive attack of fever and ague,
before stealing away to seize the opportunity for the charms she dared
not work save in secrecy.
Indeed, the subject was barred between them; and even when the fever
fiend held him in its grip, Gunesh Chund never alluded again to the
fatal ghost.
He put aside the _saukin-mhora_ which, in her clutching at straws, she
would have had him wear as a talisman, with quite a broad laugh.
"Wouldst have me altogether a woman, mother?" he asked, cheerfully. "I
deemed instead I was too soft for thee. But see! whether it be the
chills or the other thing, Death will come if he is on the road."
For all the courage of his words, a conviction that he was doomed
dulled his interest in all things save his fields, and when he grew
too weak to find his way there and back his patience broke into
restlessness.
"I will go and stop at the well, mother," he said at last; "the air is
freer out there, and I weary to death looking at these dull mud
walls."
So, leaning on his mother's arm, Gunesh Chund, the _lumberdar_, made
his way for the last time down the village street, to meet Death in
the open.
"It is good to be here," he said, with peace in his face and heart, as
he lay day after day, gazing with dull, contented eyes at the broad
expanse of newly-tilled soil, where the sun gleamed on the furrows.
The birds chattering in the mulberry-tree overhead, and the ceaseless
babble of the life-giving water flowing past him, filled his ears with
familiar comfort. There was nothing here to puzzle his slow brain;
nothing to disturb a nature welded, by long centuries of toil under
the sunny skies, into perfect accord with its environment.
So his mother, coming back from her unavailing spells, found him one
day looking out over the springing crops with sightless eyes and
placid face.
"I might have saved him," she said to herself with infinite
bitterness, as from the sleeping-place on the roof she watched the
smoke of his funeral pyre drift away into the cloudless blue--"I might
have saved him but for the letter. Oh, curses, curses, ten thousand
curses on those who taught her to write! Curses to all eternity on all
new-fangled ways!"
Once more her lean brown arms flung themselves in wild appeal towards
heaven, as she stood out against the sky facing the future--old,
sonless, hopeless.
THE BLUE MONKEY.